1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a material determining apparatus for a steel product and a material determining method for a steel product which determine a material of the steel product.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a method of determining a carbon content of a steel product, there has been known a method of taking a view of a state of a spark generated during rubbing the steel product by means of a grinder or the like by an examining staff in accordance with a visual observation and determining the carbon content of the steel product based on the state of the spark by the examining staff. However, in the method mentioned above, since a result of determination depends on an individual skill of the examining staff, there are problems that the result of determination becomes inaccurate, and a skilled examining staff is necessary.
A steel product examining apparatus for the purpose of solving the above problems is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 3482265 (Patent Document 1). The steel product examining apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 1 images a spark generated during rubbing the steel product by a grinder or the like. Further, the steel product examining apparatus sets a circular region around a position of a gravity point of a bursting spark region corresponding to each of the bursting sparks in an imaged picture to the imaged picture. Further, the steel product examining apparatus determines a carbon content of the steel product based on an area of the bursting spark region occupied in each of the circular regions, and the number of intersections at which an outer peripheral edge of each of the circular regions intersects the bursting spark region.